John Milligan

CEO
Milligan Retail

Waheed Nazir

Chairman
Arden Cross

Waheed has over 20 years of experience in planning, development and regeneration. He has held senior positions at Birmingham City Council, and more recently was appointed as the Non-Executive Chairman of Arden Cross Limited. He also advises public and private sector clients on regeneration and development projects across the UK. He is a visiting Professor at Birmingham City University and in 2017 was awarded an honorary Doctorate by Aston University. In October 2020, Waheed was awarded a Fellowship from the Academy of Social Sciences and in November 2020 was announced as the Property Personality of the Year for the Midlands. In 2019, he wrote and edited a book titled Regenerating Cities, which explores how leadership, vision and partnership working has shaped the development of UK cities over the last 30 years. Through this book he brought together some of the UK’s leading figures in the development sector, each providing their own unique and personal insight into their journeys and roles in leading some of the country’s biggest projects, including London 2012, the development of King’s Cross, estate renewal in London, and the rise of Manchester and Birmingham. He is passionate about helping young people grow and develop to unlock their potential. This has included establishing a number of programmes to provide mentoring, bursary initiatives, internships and graduate programmes in the built environment profession.

Paul Kehoe

Chief Executive
Birmingham Airport

Andy Street

Managing Director
John Lewis

Rob Groves

Regional Director
Argent

Rob Groves, is the Regional Director of Argent and has over 30 years of planning, design, construction and commercial experience. Prior to joining Argent in 2007 he was an Equity Partner at a large multi-disciplinary consulting engineer practice. His development experience includes mixed use, residential, commercial, industrial schemes as well as major public sector infrastructure.

Rob has led schemes from feasibility through to planning, compulsory purchase, which includes expert witness work, detailed design, funding both private and public sector, construction and commercial legals and lettings.

He is head of Argents’ Birmingham office and is leading the Paradise project in Birmingham, which is a joint venture with Birmingham City Council for a new commercial led mixed use development of 2 million sq/ft in the City centre, which is one of the biggest city centre projects in the regions. The project was one of the first in England to secure Enterprise Zone funding, delivering major site wide infrastructure changes to the city centre, the first phase of which is close to completion.

Rob is also the chair of the Midlands British Council of Offices.